30 January 2018

January 30, 2018

Its not often that you get the chance to photograph a vole but today was an interesting one. I took myy scope on to Haldon in the hope that I may have the chance to "digiscope" the Crossbills if they came to the high trees by my feeding station. The weather was bright and sunny so it was a perfect day for that. Recently I have been putting out much more food for the birds in the hope that I might be able to attract Bramblings to feed there. It has deffinitely made a difference with lots and lots more birds coming to the food but they were mostly Coal Tits so far. As I stood watching the tree tops I noticed a vole come to spilt seed under the feeder and I concentrated my efforts there to try and photograph it if it came again. It did return quite quickly and because my Lumix camera was attached to my scope I used this set up to get a few photos. Not ideal of course, I had to manually focus the camera and it wasnt easy. This was really interesting becaus I had seen and photographed a vole there way back on September 4th, thats about 22 weeks ago! Of course it's not possible to know if it is the same animal but its bound to be related if not the same individual. I would really like to investigate how many voles there are here. Both times I have seen them was within inches of the same spot so they must have a nest right there or very nearby.